Decision time on 'Hacksaw and Hayworth'

Enough time has passed, and it’s time to realize that “Hacksaw and Hayworth” isn’t working. The mismatched pair of early-morning talk-show hosts on The Mighty 1090 has flopped.

Lee Hamilton is a veteran sports-talk guy, and a good one. But he’s a solo act — always has been and should be again.

J.D. Hayworth is a politician who lost a U.S. Senate race in Arizona to John McCain in 2010 and won a ridiculous tryout at 1090 in which a handful of candidates spent one hour on the air with Hamilton.

Hayworth represented Arizona in the House of Representatives for a dozen years. Obviously, he knows something about politics. But his sports knowledge, as one 1090 insider said, is zero.

The show has slid to the point that station management now sits in on the show, directing the pair to move on when a subject stalls.

Because I find “Hacksaw and Hayworth” hard to listen to, I turned to XTRA Sports 1360 to sample Ben Higgins and Chris Ello on “Chris & Ben: The World of Sports.”

I admire Higgins’ work ethic — hosting the late-night sports on Channel 10, then doing an early-morning radio show.

I consider Ello a friend. He pitched at San Diego State. We formed a battery in several SDSU baseball alumni games. But I never warmed up to him as a solo radio act.

After some early struggles, Ello and Higgins now click. Both are upbeat, both are professional, both know sports. And Ernie Martinez, one of the best producer/update guys in the business, adds a lot to the show.

The problem is that 1360 has a poor signal. And Clear Channel, 1360’s parent company, has never spent a dime promoting the station — no TV commercials, no billboards, no newspaper ads.

The last ratings book in San Diego showed 1090 at 2.2, 1360 at 0.3 and ESPN 1700 at 0.1.

It’s hard to draw an audience when the public either can’t hear you or doesn’t know you’re on.

“Hacksaw and Hayworth” have the advantage of being the morning show on the Padres’ station. Traditionally, the morning show on the baseball station gets high ratings. Plus, “Hacksaw and Hayworth” have the advantage of being followed by Jim Rome.

Higgins and Ello have no holdover show from the night before and are followed by Jay Mohr, a comic who is trying to do sports.

It has gotten to the point where both stations, 1090 and 1360, need to do something.

The folks at 1090 must make a decision on whether to pull the plug on a bad show. Management at 1360 either needs to give Higgins and Ello the tools to succeed or get out of the sport-talk business.

Who needs Tiger Woods? With Phil Mickelson charging to a victory, ratings for Sunday's final round of the British Open Championship on ESPN was up 9 percent from last year to 3.6 with 2.8-million households.

Yankees-Red Sox continues to score big TV numbers. Saturday's Fox regional game did a 2.4 rating with 1.9-million households - up 39 percent from the same weekend last season that didn't feature the Red Sox and Yankees. Sunday's nearly five-hour Red Sox-Yankees game on ESPN did a 2.1 rating with 1.6-million households. That's up 50 percent from Rangers-Angels last season.